I think a lot about my mother when I’m in the kitchen, and whenever I’m

exploring the larger world of food. I’m reminded of her when I read works

by people like food writer and gastronome extraordinaire M. F. K. Fisher,

with whom I share my no-nonsense approach to cooking. I love this quote

from Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, about the value and dignifying nature

of cooking, which allows us “to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy,

and ever increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth

will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things,

but mainly of ourselves.”